Four
Mair’s words rang in my ears like a siren and I felt like my heart might thud its way through my chest. I could feel the colour draining from my face and the overwhelming urge to vomit returned to the pit of my stomach. I scraped my chair back loudly against the stone floor and stood to my feet but the sudden weakness in my legs threatened to send me tumbling to the floor and I had to lean against the table for support.
“Tom, whatever’s the matter?” Mair asked. She shot up from her chair, her face stricken with worry, and rushed over to put an arm around me. I stared at her looking for any sign that this might be some elaborate joke but I knew in my bones that it was not. I needed air. It felt like the walls were shrinking in and making the room smaller and smaller and I clasped at my throat, gasping for breath as though I might suddenly starve of oxygen and pass out.
Mair tried to ease me back into my seat but I knocked her back and made a dash for the door, clawing at my collar with every step until I got outside and fell to my knees. The contents of my pockets spilled over the ground as I lurched forward sucking in large gasps of cold air until, when I could hold it no more, I vomited onto the concrete.
“Come on, get it up,” Mair said as she stood behind me stroking my back.
“I’m ok,” I huffed out, surprised by the hoarseness of my voice. “Can I have some water?”
She took herself back inside the house and I picked the ring up from my belongings on the ground. “How?” I asked through a heavy breath, and I turned it over in my palm. I knew it had something to do with my being there. It had to. I slipped it onto my finger and closed my eyes, clutching my hands together as though in prayer, but when I opened them again I was still on the floor outside the cottage.
I clenched at my abdomen and gulped at the air to try and suppress my body’s desire to vomit again. My palms heavy with sweat, I twisted the ring about on my finger a second time and wished really hard, but still nothing happened.
“Tom, you’re white as a sheet.” Mair crouched beside me and offered me a cup of water. “What’s wrong?”
What could I even say? If I told her what I believed the truth to be, that I’d somehow travelled back through time more than a century, she’d have me carted off to an asylum. Silence was my best option until I could be surer of my circumstance.
“I’m sorry, Mair,” I said, struggling to my feet. I’d never had a panic attack before but that felt as close to one as I’d ever like to get again. I took off the ring, grabbed my belongings from the floor, and shoved them back into my pocket. “I’ll be alright in a minute. Hangover, I suppose.”
She looked at me like she didn’t quite believe what I was saying but didn't question me further. “Get some water down you and come back inside to sit down. You’re putting a worry in me.”
I brought the cup to my lips and over the rim I spotted a man marching up the lane in my direction looking not altogether impressed. “Um, Mair…” I said, and she followed my gaze.
“Go inside, Tom,” she said, stepping out of the doorway and guiding me in with a pat on the arm. She pulled the door closed behind me and stayed on the other side of it.
I headed for the armchair near the window and sat, elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. This can’t be happening. I took a few sneaky glances around the room before tucking my head away again. I desperately wanted to spot some clues that this was just an elaborate hoax but there was nothing. There were no modern items that I could recognise and cling to. No electricity, no phone, none of the comforts I’d grown up around.
Perched on a small table next to me was a photograph and I picked it up to examine it. I’d seen these types of pictures before, in books mostly, but sometimes in other people’s houses showing long-dead ancestors looking stoic and serious. An older couple stared back from the frame, their faces devoid of any emotion, and in the bottom corner, stamped in faded ink, was a small watermark that read ‘DB Photographers 1884’. Reading it made my stomach churn over again and I quickly set it back down, no longer wanting to see it.
Through the window, I could hear Mair call out to the man in Welsh and his footsteps came to a halt outside the cottage. Some words were exchanged that I couldn’t understand and then she opened the door and they both stepped inside.
He was an older chap, somewhere in his forties or fifties, with a stern serious look about him. His clothes were almost identical to the ones Mair had given me, though they looked considerably more worn out. He threw me a sideways glance and doffed his cap then waved off Mair’s offer of a seat, deciding instead to position himself at the doorway, blocking it. I got the distinct impression he didn’t particularly want to be there and wanted to be able to make his exit as quickly as possible once the time came. Mair came to rest a hand on my shoulder and for a moment they both stared at each other as though they were ready to square off.
“Tom,” she said, not taking her eyes from the man, “this is Mr Hopkin. His son Jack is the one I was telling you about earlier.”
“Good morning,” I smiled at him, unsure what business he would have with me.
“I won’t keep you long,” he said, “I just want to know if you’d heard anything of my son.”
His accented voice was low and monotone, not filled with the urgency or worry I would expect of a man whose son had gone missing, and with every word his eyes flickered around the room, never settling upon me for more than a second.
“I don’t know anything about that, sorry.” It was the truth and all I could offer him. He didn’t seem to expect I would say anything different and he remained unmoved. “I’m not sure why you’d even think I would.”
“Arthur Morgan,” he said, still not meeting my gaze. “Came into the village talking about you. Says you know where Ms Lewis is. I thought if you did then you’d be able to point me toward Jack, too. Boy’s going to get a belt when I catch hold of him, putting his mam through all this worry.”
“It’s Arthur what needs the belt,” Mair chimed in. “Throwing his fists around at anyone he doesn’t like the look of.”
“That’s quite a shiner,” Mr Hopkin said, pointing with his hat toward my face.
“It was my welcome-to-town gift from him.”
“He wants locking up, he do,” Mair continued. “I mean look at him,” she indicated to me, digging a finger into my shoulder and making me flinch. “There’s nothing of him, he obviously can’t defend himself.”
“Actually, I-” I began to argue but was quickly cut off again.
“Well Tom might be scared of him, but I ain't,” she continued. “Let me catch him in my field again…”